Date: Sun, 6 Oct 2002 23:19:56 -0400 From: Bob Johnson <bob88@bobj.org> To: Eric Gebhart <saseag@unx.sas.com>, FreeBSD mobile list <freebsd-mobile@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Mobile Networking. Message-ID: <200210062319.56654.bob88@bobj.org> In-Reply-To: <20021006151306.B11678@unx.sas.com> References: <20021006151306.B11678@unx.sas.com>
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On Sunday 06 October 2002 03:13 pm, Eric Gebhart appears to have written: > When I started using my laptop last year I was immediately annoyed > by my networking setup. At home I have wireless. At work I had > wire. > > But If I had fxp0=DHCP in my rc.conf then the etc/networking script > would always do dhclient with it. Even if there was no connection on > it. Does that mean it is built in to the laptop and is not a pccard? It won't try to use dhclient if it isn't in the system. > [...] > > Now I have wireless at work. So now I have multiple access points > to deal with. Each with it's own set of wep keys, channel, etc. [...] > > I have to think that these issues are common to most people who use > a laptop on more than one network. So how does everyone else deal > with these problems? In the past, I was fortunate to be able to use the simple expedient of having a different pcmcia network card for each network I used my laptop on. So in pccard.conf I ran whatever scripts were necessary to configure the system for the network that went with a particular card. I no longer take my laptop to work, and I'm not sure how I would deal with it now because I'd be using the same wireless card I use at home. It seems to me you are mostly on the right track. A script executed when your wireless card is inserted can do whatever it takes to figure out what network it is on and configure accordingly. Although I think it would probably be better to use the hooks provided by dhclient so that you won't run the script until after you have an IP number. Then your script can probably identify the network based on IP number, and configure accordingly. See dhclient-script(8), and look at the HOOKS section. Basically, if you have an executable script named /etc/dhclient-exit-hooks, dhclient will execute it after the interface is configured. There are also hooks for running things before dhcp configuration where you might be able to set WEP keys and such. E.g. it might ask you which network you are on and then issue the appropriate ifconfig command to set up the WEP keys, or it might even try the candidate keys in sequence until it finds one that allows the wireless card to associate. There real solutiion to the WEP key problem is to not use WEP, e.g. have an IPsec server on each network and tunnel all of your traffic through it. That has advantages for both you and the operator of the network, but obviously you may not get to say how all of the networks you use are operated. > > Eric - Bob To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-mobile" in the body of the message
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